The Wilderness Downtown

Chris Milk has partnered up with Google to create this amazing interactive Arcade Fire “The Wilderness Downtown” music video. You put in the address of a home you grew up in, and through Google Maps, your childhood neighborhood is featured!

I’ve been thinking about this piece and think that it suggests a few important lessons for thinking about the future of journalism too. At it’s most basic, what the “The Wilderness Downtown” does is point out a new way of telling stories online. It is beautiful, immersive, and engaging. It calls us to participate, to follow up, to stay engaged. It challenges us, inspires us, awes us. All of these are qualities we need in the news.